When Monsieur Perine go record shopping they don't just stick to one or two sections, they tear through the whole store. So when the Colombian trio came to Amoeba Hollywood recently they ended up with a huge and eclectic mix of music, which included everything from African percussive folk music, big band jazz, and Fleetwood Mac.

Monsieur Perine meld Django Reinhardt-style swing, Latin-American music, and jazz to create what they call "swing Colombian style." They took home the Latin GRAMMY for Best New Artist in 2015. The band consists of Catalina Garcia (vocals), Nicolas Junca (guitar), and Santiago Prieto (guitar, violin, charango).

The Bogota-based band's debut album, Hecho a Mano, was certified gold in their home country when it was released in 2012, with the award-winning Caja de Musica following three years later. Produced by Calle 13's Eduardo Cabra (aka Visitante), the LP features guest appearances from Mexican alt-rockers Cafe Tacuba and Dominican singer-songwriter Vicente Garcia. This summer, Monsieur Perine are playing select dates in Europe and North America. Catch them August 5 in Oakland at The New Parish, and August 7 in Los Angeles at The Echoplex.

Somewhere between the murky, secluded sixth and seventh grades, I saw a TV spot for an upcoming magic special in which a then unknown young man performed a card trick straight towards the camera. Not only did he know what card I had seen in his deck but he changed another card into that same card right before my eyes. The young man's name was David Blaine, and the special was called Street Magic. By now we're probably all familiar with David Blaine, and his deadpan style of magic and physical feats, but something that people probably don't remember about his first couple of TV specials is how great the music was. Let me tell ya, it was really good. My oncoming obsession with the David Blaine specials (I recorded them live on VHS, and watched them over and over again) was also my introduction to Dr. John, Sly & The Family Stone, Innervisions-era Stevie Wonder, and, most importantly, Jimi Hendrix.

Sure, I had heard Hendrix before; I vaguely knew "Purple Haze" and "Foxey Lady," and I knew he was considered a legend; but it wasn't until I watched David Blaine walking out of a tunnel in New York City to the wah-wah-ed intro to "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" that I really heard Jimi Hendrix. Now I'm sure to those folks who were musically aware pre-Street Magic this introduction might not garner major record store cred, but to my twelve-year-old self, this combination of sound and image was monumentally cool.

In celebration of his new career-spanning box set, blues legend Bobby Rush recently took the Amoeba Hollywood stage. "I don't claim to be a young boy, but I am blessed; November the 10th, I'll be 83 years old," he told the crowd before easing into his own version of the Howlin' Wolf classic "The Natchez Burning," which tells the true story of a Mississippi nightclub that burned down, killing 209 people. In his own version Rush changes the names of the musicians involved in the fire to those of Muddy Waters, B.B. King, and Jimmy Reed - all legends who have now passed. But Bobby Rush lives on, which is something he doesn't take lightly. He was sure to tell the audience how thankful he was to have them there, and to be able to live as long as he has "to see the world change, in a lot of different ways.

While Rush's music usually features a full band and rides a line between blues, soul, and funk, his performance at Amoeba was a special, intimate show; his singing only accompanied by his guitar, his harmonica, and the beat of his feet. The stripped-down set brought the very essence of the blues out of his tunes, while still infusing them with his own brand of funk and sense of humor. With his cutting (yet never rushed) guitar, his thick, howling harmonica, and his steady stomping Rush kept the audience riveted, responsive, and wanting more.

In 1857,FrenchmanÉdouard-Léon Scott de Martinvillepatented his invention for recording sound, the phonautograph. Twenty years later, in 1877, someone first realized that his phonautogramscould alsoplay back recorded music. It was the same year, coincidentally, thatThomas Edisonpatented the phonograph and thus the age of recorded music began. In 2015, former Amoebite Matthew Messbarger posted anNME"Best of 1990" on myFacebooktimeline and I decided to began reviewing the best songs of each year, from 1877 to the present, in random order.

In recent years the prestigious UK Festival Awards named the once outlawed Isle Of Wight Festival the 'Best Major Festival' across the festival-rich United Kingdom that hosts such other well known annual festivals as Glastonbury, Reading, and Creamfields. But once upon a time - back five decades ago - so controversial was this short-lived rock music festival off the southern coast of England, that began as a counterculture event during the "summer of love" in 1968, that following its overwhelmingly popular third year it got shut down by the government. In fact so notorious the shutdown of the event dubbed "the Woodstock of Europe" that it even earned a British Parliament Act named after it.

Following the 1970 Isle of Wight festival, which horrified many locals when it attracted an estimated 600,000 long haired hippies to this once quiet small southern English island. For context that was nearly five times the population of the island - hence the uproar by the ill-prepared citizens of the island whose loud vocal complaints were heard by politicians. Hence why before the next year's festival could take place the British Parliament had passed the "Isle of Wight Act." That act introduced new legislature that made it illegal to present gatherings of more than 5,000 people on the island without a special license.